Thread by @dragnetizen

A thread for Progressives:

You ever feel like you're experiencing Groundhog's Day? I've been experiencing this feeling ever since the 2020 primary season began.

I would like to illustrate this by reviewing a shapeshifting account which operated from April 2015 to July 2016.

[2] The first thing I'd like to note is that this account is just one of many that were never cleaned up by Twitter. Perhaps one might believe that Twitter has taken this issue seriously. But have they?

What happened in 2016 on social media was a matter of volume. That volume -

[3] has not been addressed. Twitter has continuously low-balled the volume, as seen by the initial numbers they revealed to the public which kept growing larger due to pressure from reporters, investigators & Congress.

I digress. Let's take a look at the early life of this acct

[4] The operator of this account was very pro-Hillary in the beginning. But this would not last.

It was also an aspiring comedian according to those tweets & looking for a literary agent, per the bio on the account. Moreover, the operator claimed to be an atheist & a socialist.

[5] Later on, the account began promoting Bernie Sanders. Later evidence reveals that this promotion served an ulterior agenda.

The operator claimed to be feeling the Bern since 97, but the aforementioned tweets contradict this claim.

[6] Some of those previous tweets demonstrate why I am feeling a bit of déjà vu right now. Perhaps you recall all the #[insert candidate name]Blackout trends that were propagated on Twitter during these primaries. Or perhaps you recall the #BernieBeatsTrump trend?

[7] In between the regular political messaging, this acct would do a bit of fundraising, similar to other online operations that were ongoing during 2016.

[8] The operator pushed for Bernie to run third party. Interestingly, Trump also did this.

[9] But, Bernie didn't oblige.

The operator had some choice words for those who were advocating for unity, much like what we're seeing again on Twitter this year. Accounts like this one served to misrepresent Bernie's supporters with toxicity. This narrative has kinda stuck.

[10] More déjà vu with that #VoteBlueNoMatterWho and the boilerplate response. Feel free to double-check the dates. This was from 2016, I assure you.

Notice the acct it's retweeting, there? That one is still active. In early 2017, the acct looked different than it does now.

[11] The #ClimateChange is gone, replaced with pro-Trump messaging. This account looks a bit similar to the one we've been talking about, when examining the profile pictures.

The ConvertaAtheist acct promoted hashtags that are once again popular, like #DemExit & #BernieOrBust.

[12] This acct also started promoting a different candidate.

[13] Notice the incongruence? #BernieOrBust would naturally exclude Trump. That's the 'or bust' part of the message. But for this acct, there's no real incongruence, because this was always the agenda. The messaging has always been building to this.

[14] The only point was to do whatever it takes, no matter how disingenuous, to achieve a singular outcome, depressing voter turnout.

The account had no allegiance to Bernie or Hillary or Jill.

[15] The account was targeting a known group of potential voters and working to first infiltrate them and then subvert the conversation. It was far from the only one. In the meantime, when no one was paying close attention, it was liking numerous Trump tweets.

[16] While we may never know for sure whether this was a political operation orchestrated by Trump's team or some other hostile actors who were known to be operating at the time, there are some hints. Long before the Wikileaks DNC dump in late July, it promoted Guccifer 2.0.

[17] And the operator also had an interesting habit of using/promoting material from a certain outlet, to include material that was completely unrelated to the 2016 election it was so fixated on until it disappeared.

[18] As I mentioned much earlier, there were many other accounts duplicating these efforts during that election. Some have been caught, some have not been. Some are doing the same thing they did in 2016.

I hope we won't get fooled again.